Martin Hammer

The perfect introduction to the life and work of Francis Bacon

Phaidon Focus

Francis Bacon

Brandy

Colm Toibin

Martin Harrison

Richard Francis

Richard Calvocoressi

Encompassing more than twenty-five paintings that Francis Bacon made in London and Paris during the last two decades of his life, this book serves as a companion to the 2015 exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, New York, and is the first in-depth exploration of the innovations of the artist’s late work. In his late paintings, Francis Bacon refined themes that had long obsessed him. He quoted reflexively from his oeuvre, reworking subjects to strip them to the bare essentials. This stunning new book features over 150 color illustrations of the artist’s work and related materials, including reproductions of ephemera from Bacon’s Hugh Lane studio."

Late Paintings

James Haliburton

Mark Stevens

Annalyn Swan

A compelling and comprehensive look at the life and art of Francis Bacon, one of the iconic painters of the twentieth century--from the Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of de Kooning: An American Master. This intimate study of the singularly private, darkly funny, eruptive man and his extraordinary art "is bejeweled with sensuous detail ... the iconoclastic charm of the artist keeps the pages turning" (The Washington Post). "A definitive life of Francis Bacon ... Stevens and Swan are vivid scene setters ... Francis Bacon does justice to the contradictions of both the man and the art." --The Boston Globe Francis Bacon created an indelible image of mankind in modern times, and played an outsized role in both twentieth century art and life--from his public emergence with his legendary Triptych 1944 (its images "so unrelievedly awful" that people fled the gallery), to his death in Madrid in 1992. Bacon was a witty free spirit and unabashed homosexual at a time when many others remained closeted, and his exploits were as unforgettable as his images. He moved among the worlds of London's Soho and East End, the literary salons of London and Paris, and the homosexual life of Tangier. Through hundreds of interviews, and extensive new research, the authors probe Bacon's childhood in Ireland (he earned his father's lasting disdain because his asthma prevented him from hunting); his increasingly open homosexuality; his early design career--never before explored in detail; the formation of his vision; his early failure as an artist; his uneasy relationship with American abstract art; and his improbable late emergence onto the international stage as one of the great visionaries of the twentieth century. In all, Francis Bacon: Revelations gives us a more complete and nuanced--and more international--portrait than ever before of this singularly private, darkly funny, eruptive man and his equally eruptive, extraordinary art. Bacon was not just an influential artist, he helped remake the twentieth-century figure.

Revelations

Francis Bacon Phaidon Focus

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